Category: Cops
Cut In Line, Go To Prison
If you’re going to rob convenience stores during peak business hours, you should at least have the courtesy to wait your turn in line, letting other customers get their Fritos and Snapple before disrupting transactions.
In Oklahoma City, a guy named Joe Campbell, Jr., recently learned his lesson in convenience store courtesy the hard way. Campbell suffered from both poor timing and atrocious manners when he apparently got tired of waiting in line at the 7-Eleven. Joe cut in front of two husky young fellows, brandished his knife at the clerk, and reached into the open till.
Clutching the cash, however, probably formed Joe’s last conscious thoughts for a while. The two guys he shoved aside were Danny Fitzwilliam and Jon Whitekiller, both undercover Oklahoma City cops.
Campbell became the subject of a brisk take-down — like to tile-tasting, linoleum-licking level — and was promptly, if unceremoniously cuffed.
Moral: Never step between armed men and their burritos-to-go.
Next Time Pack A Gun
Robert Ruffolo may have thought he was escaping the wild rounds of regular deer season. He may have believed that altitude promoted safety. He may have thought he was perfectly secure when he lugged his bowhunting outfit up into his cozy treestand near Prosperity, Penn.
Not much chance of gettin’ doinked with a .30-30, tickled with a 12 gauge, rack-whacked by a crazed whitetail, or even skewered by a stray ground-level arrow.
Maybe he should have looked up. On a recent fall Saturday, Bob became the first deer hunter of the very first day of the Pennsylvania season to be struck by lightning.
The slightly overdone archer was listed in fair condition at a local hospital. He wasn’t giving interviews, but his 15-year-old son got some air time.
“There’s his long underwear that just got fried,” the lad announced, displaying a scorched swatch of fabric.
Cognitively Challenged
They had three-fifths of the elements necessary for a group armed robbery: a gun, a knife and a getaway car.
The two-fifths they were missing were a viable victim with something of value to steal and the requisite brains to commit a simple crime.
This last element proved critical for a trio of cognitively-challenged would-be “stickup persons.”
Thomas Bray and Todd Kirby, both 31, and 21-year-old Lori Stanton are enjoying nutritious correctional institution meals while trying to figure out what went wrong with their Spring Valley, Calif., crime spree. Their intended victim, a homeless fellow without two nickels to rub together, still wonders why they ever tried to rob someone so obviously penniless.
Bonnie and the two Clydes initially grabbed Richard The Homeless and impressed the heck out of him at gun-and-knife-point. Finding he had no money, they began beating him until he promised to come up with some cash via a loan from a friend.
This constituted armed robbery and aggravated assault.
Then they all squeezed into the getaway car and went in search of Richard’s monied friend. This completed the elements for kidnapping.
Richard directed them to a modest residence and persuaded the crooks to let him go in alone, as they might frighten his pal. They agreed.
Richard emerged a short time later, chagrined to find his buddy had neither money to loan nor a phone to call the cops. After a brief conversation, they all pushed on to another friend’s house. Same scene, same results: no money, no phone, though Richard wasn’t mentioning his growing desire to get some blue suits involved in the action
Doubtless, following a chorus of witty rejoinders like, “Duh, what?” and “No bucks? Bummer!” the vehicular ship of fools set sail for a third and final house.
Ron Williams, resident of the third house and an acquaintance of Richard’s, was also short of pocket change but the proud consumer of Ma Bell’s communication services.
First, though, after hearing Richard’s story, he waltzed outside in his bathrobe to satisfy himself; there were three bozos stupid enough to try adapting the rules of a suburban “progressive dinner” to armed robbery. He looked, he saw, they were.
The trio of mental mastodons may have been a bit suspicious when their intended benefactor sauntered up to their car in his slippers, but he put them at ease.
“Oh, I thought you were someone else,” he assured them. Ron went back into the house. “Then I called 911 because I didn’t feel like messing with those idiots.” Good choice.
The idiots relaxed and waited for their loot. Unknowingly, they were also waiting for several squad cars full of unamused cops.
Unless Messrs. Bray and Kirby and Mme. Stanton are offered top cabinet jobs in D.C., they’re going to have a hard time selling their saga to any producer outside of the Gong Show.
—
Mark Moritz hung up his satirical spurs to a collective sigh of relief from America’s gun writers whom he had lampooned in Friendly Fire for two long, painful years. The 10 Ring is written by Commander Gilmore, a retired San Diego police officer who bases his humor, like Mark did, on actual occurrences. All the incidents described by the Commander are true.
We’ve all seen them, whether we’re at the range or in a gun shop. It’s just those kinds of things that you wish people understood were not a good idea. And when it comes to the topic of the 1911, I’ve got a list of them.
When Unloading
Some time early in the epoch of the 1911, folks figured out that they could unload by removing the magazine and then, with the palm of their free hand over the ejection port, rack the slide and eject the chambered cartridge into their hand.
In the early days of 1911’s with short ejectors, one could get away with that. Today, most autopistols have longer ejectors. If the slide sticks and the shooter pulls harder and achieves a sudden, sharp rearward movement, there is a chance the primer could be driven into that long ejector and cause an open-chamber detonation. This would not be good.
The brass casing is no longer surrounded by ordnance steel, but rather by the palm of your hand. If everything breaks wrong way, it turns into a miniature grenade that could drive brass shrapnel into the nerves of the palm of the hand. Just eject the darn thing to the floor or the ground. Open chamber detonations are rare, but they can happen. It’s not worth the risk.
There are still some schools that teach their students to unload that way … and there are some schools and police academies that forbid it. This writer is in the latter camp. Saying, “I’ve always done it this way and never had an accident” is like saying “I never wear a seatbelt and never had an auto accident.” The point is, the accident you haven’t had yet is the reason you wear the seatbelt just in case. Same in this regard.
Avoid the Press-Check
“Combat semantics” alert: a chamber check is when you retract the slide slightly to see whether or not there’s a round in the chamber, and a press-check is a specific technique subset of that procedure.
Developed around the 1911 with John Moses Browning’s original design of a short recoil spring guide, the press check has the shooter hold the pistol’s frame normally in the gun hand with the finger clear of the trigger, and the support hand thumb hooks onto the inside of the triggerguard while the same hand’s index finger applies rearward pressure to the bottom front of the slide to bring the slide slightly back.
Let that sink in. Digit in triggerguard of probably loaded weapon. Thumb safety off so the slide of a 1911 or P-35 can move rearward. Firing grasp depressing grip safety. Finger in proximity to muzzle of possibly/probably loaded gun.
What could go wrong?
For anyone who came in late, what can go wrong is that a fat or gloved thumb can apply pressure inadvertently to a trigger (particularly a long trigger) inside the 1911’s relatively small triggerguard space. If the hand slips, the slide can come forward under spring pressure, possibly driving the muzzle down right onto that index finger. The slide coming forward pulls the gun and its trigger forward toward that thumb and…BANG.
Even if the finger stays under the muzzle, hot burning gases exiting the muzzle with thousands of pounds per square inch pressure — the muzzle blast we see at night — can take flesh off that finger down to the blackened bone.
Early in my career, I met a top shooter who had blown part of his left finger off doing a press check to confirm that there was a .45 round in the chamber of his 1911. Well, there was … .
That reminded me why John Browning put the grasping grooves at the rear of the slide, and that’s where I would very strongly suggest your support hand be when performing a chamber check. Working from the rear of the slide will also, unlike the press-check, have commonality of training and work with a 1911 (or any other auto pistol) with a full-length guide rod (FLGR) that prevents a press check. Indeed, one might consider the FLGR a safety feature in this respect.
Trigger Finger in Register…Where?
We all know to keep the finger out of the triggerguard unless and until we are in the very act of intentionally discharging the weapon. Perched on the front edge of the triggerguard is not safe: it holds the finger taut, and a startle response can snap it straight back into the trigger hard enough to cause an unintended discharge.
With most pistols, straight along the frame is fine. However, the 1911 and many other pistols have a slide stop stud which protrudes from the right side and functions also as a takedown button. When it gets loose, every now and then a straight finger inadvertently pushes it leftward, and at the first shot the gun will lock up. The right-handed shooter can prevent that by indexing the fingernail of their trigger finger behind that stud, which will also let a long finger get on the trigger a little bit faster when the time comes to do so.
Muzzle Direction
New shooters and those with sub-optimal upper body strength may have trouble racking a slide. When they do, it’s human nature to pull the gun into their center, their abdomen, and align skeleton-muscular support by putting their arms in line with the barrel. This points the gun at anyone next to them (such as on a firing line), at their own forearm, and even at their own torso.
The gun must be pointed downrange or in some other safe direction while working the slide. Techniques for making slide-racking easier would constitute a whole article in and of themselves, and if you’d like such an article, let us know in the comments below.
A Slam Dunk
One of mine, learned from experience and debriefing multiple top gunsmiths, is slamming the slide closed on an empty chamber — particularly with 1911s. One of the world’s most famous 1911 experts is Bill Wilson, who did a whole video on why this shouldn’t be done, augmented with the same advice from handgun guru Ken Hackathorn. Shooting and 1911 expert Guy Joubert and national IDPA champion Austin Proulx have done a similar video with the same advice, as have I and others.
On a 1911, the practice is ruinous to the sear, and on any semi-auto it’s tough on the extractor and the locking lugs. People who defend the practice say things like “Come on, the slide is rocketing back and forth when we shoot it, right?” Or, “That’s how they taught me to do it in the Navy.”
Let me answer those questions. First, during the actual firing cycle, the slide’s forward movement is slowed down and “cushioned” as the slide drives the topmost cartridge past the resistance of the feed lips. Second, as the cartridge moves forward, the extractor slides into the extractor groove between the case rim and the body of the casing, an element of controlled feed that in turn supports the extractor hook. That cushioning and support is absent when the slide slams forward on an empty pistol.
You do want to slam the slide closed when chambering a live round from the magazine, but that’s exactly what the gun was designed for; not slamming closed without a live round cushioning the mechanism.
Even worse is the amateur’s practice of locking the slide open, dropping a live cartridge into the chamber through the ejection port, and slamming the slide closed. Now the extractor is hitting the cartridge rim from the wrong direction, which can cause chipping of the extractor hook. It also forces a 1911’s internal extractor outward in a manner it was not designed for, and it won’t take too much of this abuse to cause the extractor to lose tension and start failing to do its job.
Memorize a simple rule — slam it loaded (to guarantee the cartridge goes fully into battery) but ease it empty. And when loading the chamber, rack a round in from the magazine, on-safe your 1911 and holster it, and then remove the magazine, top it off with one more cartridge, and re-insert it into the holstered pistol.
Conclusion
We all love guns, and we want people to handle them safely and efficiently. We also don’t want anyone to look like a bozo — which they will to any gun-savvy person who sees them do any of these things I’ve covered. So, play it safe, treat those guns safely and with respect, and get out to the range and have some fun.
Your most powerful weapon doesn’t need batteries and never runs out of ammunition. What are the secrets of the professionals when it comes to recognition and rapid assessment of a developing threat? Even more effective, how can you see it, hear it and sense it coming?
Our society is divided into two groups: those who don’t care about or are unaware of the possibility something bad can happen to them and are unprepared to handle it, versus those who are aware and prepared if something bad does happen. Learning how to use your most powerful weapon places you in the latter group and prepares you by increasing your knowledge and decreasing your vulnerability.
Protection professionals will tell you that your mind is your most effective weapon. Knowing what to look for, how to look for it and what to do if you see a threat is paramount. In most situations, you can remain proactive and take preventative measures against a potential threat.
A threat refers to any range of behaviors that can result in both physical and psychological harm to oneself in the environment. This type of environmental interaction centers on harming another person, either physically or mentally.
Threat Identification
The most immediate tool we have on board for threat identification is our situational awareness. Environmentally speaking, situational awareness is knowing what goes on around you. Whether at home, in your car or on foot, applying good situational awareness eliminates such potential threats as being taken by surprise or placing yourself behind the action-reaction power curve of an undesired event occurring around you. As such, it can be used to control your environment.
Protection experts use situational awareness as a deterrent. When a predator knows that you are on to them, the element of surprise has been eliminated. This awareness deflates their motivation.
Situational awareness also keeps you informed of what your environment is telling you and a step ahead of events that are emerging around you. It keeps you connected to your surroundings and prepared. When effectively applied, situational awareness can be used to take control of your environment, act as a deterrent and make you a harder target.
Threat Indicators
If you are not aware of something, then that something is invisible to you.
What goes unseen can sometimes be the one thing that causes the biggest problem. Being able to identify a threat by using your situational awareness is what affords you the most time and opportunity to control that threat and formulate an immediate response to your environment that could save lives. Once a threat has been identified, this information can then be used to determine your best course of action. How can you do this?
The key to preventing a potential threat from developing into an active threat is to first identify threat indicators. Such indicators are often your only visible clues or observable pre-attack behaviors that something bad is about to happen. Some examples of threat indicators include body posture, eye contact and an intercept course.
Body Posture
How people carry themselves can be an indicator of their intentions. To a trained observer, how and where a person positions their body may indicate a potential threat.
In typical non-threatening situations, most people carry themselves calmly and without tension. They are usually standing “squarely” in front of you with both feet even with their shoulders, commonly referred to as a neutral position.
If you find their feet in a bladed position — with one of their feet set back or braced and with the other in front — this affords the attacker a tactical advantage in preparation for a physical strike or rapid aggressive movement.
Eye Contact
Eye contact is one of the earliest detectable indicators of a potential or developing threat. Normal people make normal eye contact. They look you in the eye — but not too intently.
Someone who intends you harm may look intently at you or start sizing you up. Known as giving you the “hairy eyeball”, this will look and feel different than normal eye contact.
Intercept Course
Normal people walk about with self-determination and specific purpose. They generally tend to their own business and are focused on shopping, running errands, or their movement to and from their car.
Should their attention shift to you and your movements, such as what you are doing or where you may be going, then this is a pre-attack indicator that should not be ignored.
If you accelerate your pace and they match or exceed your pace, then these are red flags that may very well indicate an intercept course to initiate an attack.
Conclusion
Although, they may sometimes be subtle, threat indicators can provide enough information for you to orient yourself to your surroundings, spot a potential threat, make your tactical decision based on updated information and then act on that decision. Threat indicators should be considered red flags and treated as such.
Categories
Air Pirates!
Almost before the bodies were cold at Australia’s Bondi Beach, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his colleagues were talking about stricter gun control laws, including limits on the number of licensed firearms an Australian citizen could own, and preventing non-citizens from getting a gun license.
Amid the anguish, there were some social media sneers at Americans for the number of mass shootings reported in the U.S., most of which happen in so-called “gun-free zones,” where the victims are just as disarmed as those who died at the Hannukkah celebration in Sydney.
But Albanese and his cheerleaders could learn something from us Yanks, and from Jews in Israel, where the threat of violence hovers over the population every single day.
Proponents of Australian-style disarmament deliberately ignore, or significantly downplay, the other side of this dilemma. Fifteen of Albanese’s countrymen are dead because they could not fight back.
Here’s a brief refresher of recent history to put this in perspective:
Back on Sept. 8 in East Jerusalem, two Palestinian killers opened fire at a bus station, viciously gunning down more than 20 people, killing six of them, until at least two people, including an armed private citizen, returned fire. Both attackers were fatally shot. The armed civilian was joined by an off-duty soldier in the armed response.
How many lives might have been saved had Australians been able to fight back, as their contemporaries half a world away?
When CBS News reported the East Jerusalem shooting, it waited until the sixth paragraph to mention how the attack was stopped. When the BBC initially reported the mass shooting, it noted the off-duty soldier and armed civilian “neutralized” the attackers.
Jump back in time to July 17, 2022 when a crazed killer opened fire in the food court at the Greenwood Park Mall in Greenwood, Indiana.
Armed with a rifle, the gunman fatally shot two people and likely would have upped the score, except for the quick actions of 22-year-old Elijah Dicken, a legally-armed private citizen who—firing from a distance estimated at 40 yards—put eight of the ten shots he fired into the murderer, ending the rampage.
This incident happened barely two months after an armed female citizen in Charleston, West Virginia put an end to what could have been a deadly mass shooting by a man identified as 37-year-old Dennis Butler.
As reported by WRAL News at the time, Butler’s misadventure started with him “speeding up and down a parking lot” inside an apartment complex where people were attending a graduation party and birthday party. When they asked him to slow down, he left and then returned to up the game, armed with a semi-automatic rifle, with which he opened fire.
But the unidentified armed citizen drew her legally carried handgun and stopped him, cold.
Lt. Tony Hazelett, with the Charleston Police Department, told reporters at the time, “This lady was carrying a lawful firearm. A law abiding citizen who stopped the threat of probably 20 or 30 people getting killed. She engaged the threat and stopped it. She didn’t run from the threat, she engaged it. Preventing a mass casualty event here in Charleston.”
Back in May of this year, a legally armed private citizen fatally shot a teen gunman who had just opened fire on two other people in downtown Seattle.
According to KING News, the young shooter—illegally armed with a handgun under Washington statute—was leaving the scene when the 57-year-old armed citizen drew his handgun and fired.
In early November, again in downtown Seattle, a pair of armed would-be carjackers made what firearms authority Massad Ayoob might call a critical error in the victim selection process.
They attempted to steal a sports car at gunpoint, only to be shot by the car’s owner. As reported by KOMO News at the time, both suspects ended up in the same hospital—one was dumped there by two other suspects, who quickly fled—while police arrested the other wounded man who was transported to the hospital.
When golf pro Phil Mickelson posted a message on ‘X’ about the Bondi Beach mass shooting, he observed, “The 2 terrorists didn’t seem affected by the strict gun laws already in place. In fact the shooting went on for a long time since there wasn’t anybody else with a gun to stop them. I’m not a big gun guy but even I’m not this dumb to believe what this guy is selling.”
He is catching lots of heat from anti-gunners, but self-defense-oriented people are coming to his defense with remarks including:
- “If Australia had a right to bear arms then this attack would not have even started.”
- “Both those killers would have been easy pickins if they had concealed carry over there. They didn’t even try to hide.”
- “Civilians bravely tried to stop the assailants – even without firearms – what armed police on the scene failed to. Two were killed outright and one wounded for the attempt. Even a few armed civilians with guns might have had a fighting chance to limit the tragedy.”
It is true that mass shootings in Australia are rare, but when they happen, nobody can fight back. Things are different in the U.S. and Israel.
Politicians like Prime Minister Albanese have armed security, while the people on Bondi Beach did not have that luxury. Citizens in Israel can get gun permits and can fight back. Millions of citizens in the U.S. can legally carry, and they have fought back.
Australia’s strict gun laws didn’t prevent the Bondi Beach mayhem. There’s a lesson in that for Prime Minister Albanese.
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
For months, CBS News Chicago has been pulling on a thread that many lawful gun owners, especially Black gun owners, have lived with for years. Now, an inside source has said the quiet part out loud.
According to the exclusive report, some Chicago police officers are arresting law-abiding gun owners with valid FOID cards and concealed carry licenses anyway. And there may be career and financial incentives to do it.
The source, a decorated veteran officer who spoke under the condition of anonymity, said bluntly that race plays a role and that arrests tied to firearms can boost an officer’s numbers, visibility, and chances for promotion.
“If you have really high numbers in terms of firearms recovered,” the source told CBS. “You will get the attention of supervisors. If you get promoted, then yeah—you’re financially better off.”
The station documented multiple cases where Black gun owners followed the law perfectly, disclosed their firearms during traffic stops, presented valid licenses, and were still arrested and charged with felonies.
One of those cases involved Curtis Tarver, an Illinois state lawmaker. After being stopped for a minor traffic issue, Tarver immediately disclosed his firearm and showed police his FOID and concealed carry license.
Officers even acknowledged that everything appeared in order. Then they arrested him anyway after claiming his license was revoked in the system.
It wasn’t.
Tarver’s case was eventually dismissed. But not before he was booked, photographed, and publicly labeled a criminal. That mugshot still exists. The damage didn’t disappear when the charges did.
CBS Chicago also highlighted Louis McWilliams, a business owner who took the required classes, paid the fees, obtained his license, and carried legally. When police couldn’t immediately verify his CCL in the state database, he was arrested and charged with two felonies. Months later, prosecutors dropped the charges after confirming his license was valid all along.
And here’s the kicker: no one is tracking how often this happens.
Neither the Chicago Police Department nor the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office tracks how many lawful gun owners are wrongly charged and later cleared. Yet CPD provided a database showing more than 52,000 firearms seized as “illegal” since 2019. That includes guns belonging to people whose cases were dismissed.
Legal experts said Illinois law is clear: if a license holder presents valid credentials, disclosure requirements are met. Period.
But as one expert warned, the “no harm, no foul” mindset ignores the real consequences: arrest, jail, legal bills, lost jobs, public shaming, and permanent records that don’t magically vanish.
For gun owners watching from the outside, the message is unsettling. Follow the law, do everything right, and you still might get cuffed.
As CBS Chicago’s reporting shows, the issue isn’t public safety. It’s accountability. And until the system starts tracking these cases, the scope of the problem may be far bigger than anyone wants to admit.